


Somehow

by perfectlyrose



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, F/M, Gen, criminal!rose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 04:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3965044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlyrose/pseuds/perfectlyrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Her mission was still her life and James had no place in that no matter the fondness she had for him or the love he had for her. He couldn’t keep her and he couldn’t go with her. They were always going to be stuck in this limbo, wondering what could be, wondering what might have been, while they tore each other to shreds.” (Ten/Rose AU based on “The Bagman’s Gambit”)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somehow

**Author's Note:**

> prompted by fardareismai
> 
> I'm sorry.
> 
> warnings for unrequited love themes and manipulation and just general heartache.

He should have known from the moment she walked up to him in the pub that she had an ulterior motive.

Girls, women, like her don’t just walk up to men like him who are more interested in the work they brought with them to dinner than they are in their surroundings. He wasn’t unaware of his attractiveness. It was simply a fact to him that he possessed features generally considered to be pleasing to potential sexual partners and he didn’t try to play them up or down. Usually his lack of social awareness and tendency to muck up most social interactions kept people away.

Not her though. No, she walked up to his table, all swaying hips and flirtatious, predatory smile, and sat down across from him. She introduced herself as Rose Tyler and explained that she was here on her own as well and thought he might like some company.

The way her voice caressed the last word made it clear that she wasn’t just talking about dinner.

He stumbled over introducing himself. James Smith just sounded so dull and flat when placed side by side with Rose Tyler, which felt like a song and a spark on his tongue. She just smiled at him, gentler this time and guided him into conversation. She encouraged him so effortlessly that he was rambling on about his astronomy hobby and the vastness of space at top speed before he realized it.

He was in deep by his second pint and he didn’t even realize it.

By the time he was on his third, Rose was on his side of the table, slowly getting closer to him. When he asked what she was doing, she simply told him that she was waiting for him to finish talking so she could kiss him, which she did. She kissed him softly and then kept kissing him until it was deep and wet and all-encompassing and he couldn’t think of anything else but her lips and her tongue and the feel of her hair between his fingers.

He took her back to his flat that night and when he woke in the morning it was to cold sheets, vivid memories and a note promising to see him again.

It was the first time she left him but it was nowhere near the last, he just didn’t know it yet.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

She showed up at the pub at least twice a week for the next month, always seeking James out immediately.

It was always the same pattern. She’d sit with him, maneuver him into talking about something that interested him and get him rambling and then they’d go back to his flat. She was always gone in the morning.

He’d had more sex in the last month than he’d had in the last six years and he tried to tell himself it was enough but there was always a niggling reminder in the back of his head that he knew next to nothing about Rose. He knew her body. Knew how her golden hair was silken beneath his fingers and how she reacted to different touches. Knew that she liked leaving marks on him like a claim he could feel the next day when she was inevitably gone and knew that she didn’t like being marked herself. He knew how it felt when she came apart around his fingers, his tongue, his cock but he didn’t know anything about _her_ and he desperately wanted to know everything.

He just didn’t know how to ask.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

When she shows up on his lunch break, which he spends down near Westminster Bridge so he can watch the people go by, to say he was surprised would be an understatement. She kissed him hello and then dragged him off to a public bathroom, intent clear.

They were both sated and sweaty and smiling when she breathlessly whispered that she needed a favor.

His head was spinning as he walked back to the government offices where he worked. It was obvious now that she had been working him from the beginning, using him for his access to classified documents.

For some reason it didn’t bother him. He knew he should feel betrayed but he’d been searching for a reason that Rose was interested in him from the beginning and now he had one. It was a small favor, really, and he most likely would have done it weeks ago for her had she asked.

He couldn’t help but wonder if she’d spent more time with him just because she wanted to. There was no reason for her to have listened to him for all these weeks just to get her hands on a handful of files that were buried in the back of an archive.

James knew it was foolish, but he still hoped there was something more between them than manipulation, that he was more than a means to an end.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Rose was sitting outside of his flat when he got home. He handed the files to her wordlessly before moving to unlock his door. She whispered his name in a slightly pained voice, not taking her eyes off of him even to check the files. He didn’t answer her but when he pushed the door to his flat open and walked inside, he left it open, tacitly inviting her in. She accepted and locked the door behind herself.

They sat in the living room, not speaking. She didn’t apologize and he couldn’t find the right words to ask her to explain what was going on. If he’d meant nothing to her he felt she would have walked away without a backwards glance once the files were in her hands.

Finally, she started talking. She asked if James had read the files and when he nodded she gave him a sad smile. “Then you know,” she said, “what they did.”

“They took John,” she whispered hoarsely, “killed him. I’m getting revenge, have been for the past three years.”

When James asked who John was she just said his name, John Smith. “Another Smith. A common name shared by two very uncommon men.” It was the first time she’d looked him in the eye since entering his flat. There were tears shining in her eyes, a vulnerability there James had never been witness to before.

Quietly, haltingly, Rose told him about a man with a storm in his blue eyes and a leather coat that acted as armor against the world and how he had saved her and she had saved him right back up until the day that she didn’t.

It was obvious that she had been in love with him even though she never said it and James’s heart broke for her.

They were sitting next to each other on the couch and he dropped a kiss to the top of her head, trying to comfort her. She tilted her head up and captured his mouth in a searing kiss. He let her lead, figuring she needed to feel in control after telling her story and removing one of the thousands of walls she kept up between them, and tried to pretend that it didn’t feel like a goodbye.

Later, when they were lying in bed, he felt her start to get up and tightened his grip, whispered “Stay.”

She did.

It was the first and the last time she stayed.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

When Rose left in the morning she was kicking herself for giving into the urge to stay wrapped in his arms and welcome in his bed. She couldn’t afford to get attached to anyone. James was supposed to be just another mark on a long list that spanned the last three years. She was in the revenge business and she was good at what she did, _liked_ what she did no matter what that might say about the state of her soul. The plan had been to seduce him, get the files, walk away.

But he made her smile more than anyone had in years and it was so obvious how much he cared for her. It was sweet, he was sweet. Sweet and much too good for the likes of her. Darkness had made inroads into her soul since the day John had died and she was no longer good for anyone. The only thing left for her was revenge and she was going to have it no matter how long it took to hunt down all of the players.

It was a shame, though. She thought that, perhaps, if they had met in different circumstances, in a different lifetime, she could have fallen in love with James Smith.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

That morning was the last time he saw her for weeks. He wished he could say he was surprised but he wasn’t. It had always been only a matter of time before she ran and he’d outlived his usefulness in her life when he handed over those files.

He was shocked to get home five weeks after she left to find her waiting at his door. She didn’t waste any time, cutting off his words with a desperate kiss. She kissed him like she was trying to crawl inside his soul and make a home and he let her. It was a frenzy from start to finish and when they lay there in the aftermath, he wondered what had happened to drive her back to him but he didn’t ask.

He was just glad that she was back, even if it was just for a moment.

(He didn’t ask and she didn’t tell but she came back because she needed one more night of feeling safe and loved. It was selfish of her to not let him move on but she couldn’t bring herself to make a clean break. James had carved out a tiny niche for himself in her stony heart and she had no idea what to do about it. People close to her got hurt, got killed, and she should push James away now, shouldn’t have come back tonight. It was just so hard to do when she didn’t want to let him go.)

(She promised herself this was the last time but she knew it was probably a lie.)

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

She was gone in the morning.

James kept an eye out for her for another two weeks, not really expecting to see her. When he finally did it was in a completely unexpected place. He’d turned on the nightly news and they were running a story from the States. A plainclothes cop had been shot in killed in the capital city by a British woman who’d given her name as Marion Lewis. They flashed a picture up on the screen of the shooter and James almost dropped his drink.

It was Rose. She was brunette instead of blond and there were bruises on her face, but it was Rose.

But it couldn’t be…

She wouldn’t…

Every argument he could think of was rendered moot by his memory of the coldness in her eyes the one time she talked about her mission for revenge. He’d seen the determination and knew that while he didn’t want to believe it, she would kill a man, had killed a man, on her one woman mission.

There was no telling how many others she’d killed in cold blood without getting caught. And there had to be others. Logically, he knew that this couldn’t be the first person she’d killed when she’d been searching out the people responsible for John’s death for over three years. He didn’t want to believe it but he had to.

The woman he’d fallen in love with was warm and passionate and listened to everything he said but she was also this other woman who was closed off and ruthless and carried ice in her veins. They were one and the same and he knew, he _knew_ , he should try and move on and forget about her but it seemed like an impossible task.

That night when he laid down in the bed that they’d made love so many times he thought back to the day she’d told him about her mission. Remembered her telling him that they’d never catch her, that she couldn’t be caught, wouldn’t let herself be caught until she was done and wished that she was right next to him, whispering those words again, reassuring him that they were true.

They weren’t but he’d always been a proponent of foolish hope.

She’d been caught and he remained caught in her orbit.

Maybe one day they would both escape somehow.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He smiled when he heard a report two weeks later that Marion Lewis had escaped police custody.

At least one of them was free.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

It’d been a year since her escape. James hoped for contact from her with the same intensity he dreaded it. Doubts circled his mind whenever he thought about her, which was daily.

Maybe, just maybe, if he didn’t hear from her ever again he could forget about her. Maybe he could finally escape her gravity that he’d been trapped in from the first moment she sat down at his table. There was every reason to want to move on. He wasn’t even sure he knew her real name and there was no chance of any kind of future with her.

But oh his heart argued with all of his perfectly constructed logic. It didn’t matter who she was or what she was capable of or if he didn’t really have a chance with her, he still loved her. He still hoped she would show up one day just so he could see her again.

He tried not to think about the fact that he’d do anything she asked him to do.

Love was a terrible thing.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Two months later he received a postcard from Houston, Texas with a picture of stars on the front, the NASA symbol in the corner. He flipped it over and all it said was “Made me think of you. –R.”

He hung it on his fridge, proof that he wasn’t the only one who wasn’t able to let go of whatever the two of them had together.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Another three months and there was a phone call. He picked up, said hello, but the other side of the line was silent and then went dead.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been Rose. There was no reason to suspect that it was anything more than a wrong number but he just _knew_ it had been her on the other end of the line.

(It was her. It had been an awful day and she was bleeding and had a concussion and her target had escaped and all she wanted to do was hear James’s voice for just a second.)

(She knew that if she was in London she would have shown up at his door, bleeding or not, just so he would hold her and she could feel safe for a moment. She almost smiled at how he would react to her showing up bleeding like this, how his brown eyes would widen and he’d probably go all manic in his attempts to take care of her.)

(She kept telling herself that she couldn’t afford any attachments but she couldn’t quite let go either)

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

It had been a full two years since he had seen her in person. There had been one other hang-up phone call and a postcard sent from somewhere in France. He still watched for her on the news and in the corner of his eye, flashes of blonde making him turn in crowds every time.

Then all of a sudden she was in front of him again, grinning. He was on his way home from work, dressed in the same brown pinstripes he’d been wearing years ago when he met her. She kissed him on the cheek, took his hand and led him to a chippy.

She sat across from him, seemingly oblivious to his shock, chattering on about how much she’d missed good chips while she’d been traveling. Eventually he was drawn into her conversation, rambling much like he had years before.

He didn’t ask any of the questions he really wanted to. Didn’t ask where she’d been or why she was back or what she had been doing for the past two years.

He didn’t question her when she led them back to his flat and kissed him like she was drowning and he was the only thing keeping her afloat.

It didn’t feel like desperation or a hello or a goodbye. It felt like _them_.

He should have remembered that she was good at concealing her true purpose.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

She was gone in the morning as she always was but this was the last time she laid a kiss on his cheek while he slept and quietly left, locking the door behind her. It was the last time she was ever in his flat.

It was a goodbye and he had been too blinded by her return to see it.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Five years went by. There were no postcards sent. There was one phone call that might have been her but he was trying to learn not to hope.

He tried dating, tried meeting new people but nothing ever felt right. He had a sinking feeling that it was because most of his heart was wherever Rose happened to be.

He thought maybe he would never escape, was never sure if he wanted to even though he knew he should.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Another six months later the phone ringing in the middle of the night woke James up. He answered with a sleepy hello.

There was a strangled cry on the other end and his skin prickled with recognition and fear.

Then she said his name on an exhale like it was a prayer and he knew it was her. After all of these years it was her.

And she was in pain and asking for help.

It was in a whisper that she told him she’d been captured in Russia and didn’t know what to do. She told him that he was the only person left she could trust, that she wanted to talk to.

His traitorous heart jumped at her confession and he knew it was possibly a lie, _probably_ a lie and a manipulation tactic, but he believed her anyways. He asked her what she needed from him, prepared to give anything she asked.

She gave him a bank account number and a bureaucrat’s name. She told him to empty the account and use the money to convince the bureaucrat to get her out of here by whatever means necessary.

He said he’d do it and she was in the middle of saying thank you for the first time when she gave a cry of pain and the line went dead.

James stared at the phone in his hand in horror.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

It took three agonizing days to convince the bureaucrat to get Rose out of Russia, even with the staggering amount of money from Rose’s bank account. It took some fast talking and some begging from James but the man came around and arranged for Rose to be secreted out of the prison she was being kept in.

He was alerted when Rose arrived at the embassy in London and he rushed down there, uncaring that it was half two in the morning. She was waiting at the gate and he’d never seen a more welcome sight. She was littered with cuts and bruises, one of her eyes was swollen shut, and her left arm was in a sling but she was alive and that’s all he cared about.

Rose reached through the bars of the gate to grasp his hand. She whispered the thank you she hadn’t been able to say before. He leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers and she untangled their fingers so she could rest her hand on his cheek.

They stayed like that for a few moment, unspeaking. Rose pulled back first, tears glimmering dully in her eyes and James remembered the only other time she had looked vulnerable in front of him. That day she had taken down one of her walls but now she looked like they had all been stripped from her. He could read the heartbreak and bitterness and regret and determination on her face, could see straight into her scarred and hardened heart. He saw the spark of ruthlessness in the eye that wasn’t swollen shut, realized what people must see when she pointed a gun at them.

When she spoke again his heart stuttered to a stop before breaking in two. It was the same thing she’d said all those years ago, that they can’t catch her, won’t ever catch her for long because she’s not done yet.

She wasn’t done yet. Her mission was still her life and James had no place in that no matter the fondness she had for him or the love he had for her. He couldn’t keep her and he couldn’t go with her. They were always going to be stuck in this limbo, wondering what could be, wondering what might have been, while they tore each other to shreds.

He knew what he had to do and even though it shattered his already broken heart, he rasped out a goodbye, saying that word for the first time to her, and turned and walked away, not trusting himself to look back at the woman he loved and was leaving behind. He didn’t think he could bear seeing the flame of trust in her eyes being extinguished.

He’d helped her escape. Now it was his turn to try.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Years passed. James never forgot about Rose but he didn’t feel weighed down by his love anymore. It was still there, he suspected it always would be, but it wasn’t debilitating anymore.

He hadn’t heard from her since that night at the embassy. No postcards, no phone calls, no anything. He still absently looked for her in crowds and watched for her on the news but he saw nothing. Maybe she had escaped as well, had finally freed herself from her mission.

Really he just hoped she was safe and that she’d found happiness somewhere. He hoped and went on with his life, pretending that she didn’t haunt his dreams almost every night.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Ten years after his goodbye at the embassy he saw her. She was in a car parked across the street from his office. He froze, so used to it not being her that he didn’t know what to do now that it was.

She smiled at him, soft and full of longing. Then she pulled away from the curb and with a wave of her arm she was gone.

James knew then that her mission was over, that she was free. He also knew he’d never see her again.

Somehow they’d both escaped. They were scarred and broken and pieced back together and no longer the people they once were, but they both escaped.


End file.
